Maria in the Moon

by Louise Beech

  Picking the card from the top of the pile, I read it aloud, ‘Drunk in Charge; Fine £20,’ and threw it down in mock rage. I dropped a twenty in the bank pile.

  ‘Do I need my watch back yet?’ Christopher looked at the red strap as I reached over the board.

  ‘Not yet,’ I said softly.

  I was tired of unexpectedly finding Fern’s remnants in the flat. I was tired of missing her, of being angry that she’d misjudged me. That morning I’d opened the drawer that could only pull out when the other was shut, searching for thread to repair the red dress, and I found the white silk napkins she’d stolen from the fancy restaurant. Folded beneath our tenancy agreement, they had reminded me I should tell Victor she’d gone and arrange to pay the full monthly sum – cold, monetary details that only added to my torment. I’d held the napkins to my cheek. When I saw my reflection in the cracked mirror I felt stupid and put them back in the drawer.

  She’d only been gone four days.

  Jane jingle-jangled into the room. ‘Just someone wanting the number for a nightclub in Birmingham,’ she said. ‘Do we sound like a telephone directory?’ She looked at the board. ‘You played on?’

  She threw a nine and each of us had another go before the phone rang again. I got it on the third ring and said, ‘Flood Crisis, can I help you?’ while scribbling on the pad and adjusting the chair from its too-reclined position.

  ‘Is that Katrina?’

  I touched my chest. ‘Yes, it is.’

  ‘It’s Helen. Do you remember?’

  Of course I did. Acting-lessons Helen. Never-about-the-trees Helen.

  ‘How are you?’ I asked and tried to forget game-playing and dice and numbers, and concentrated on breathing and tuning out the world.

  ‘I’m good.’ She sounded it. I recalled her sometimes-childish-sometimes-sad voice and barely recognised her. ‘I’ve been remembering,’ she said. ‘You helped me so much last week. I got off the phone and cried for three hours. Then I stayed in bed for two days. I shut the curtains, locked the door and ignored the phone.’

  ‘But you’re up today,’ I observed. ‘And you feel better?’

  ‘Yes, I do.’

  I wrote ‘better’ on the pad.

  ‘Marcus – remember him? – was worried. He called fifteen times while I was in bed, left message after message. I kind of liked that: stressing him out. Then I saw him. I gave in and let him into the house when he wouldn’t leave and … well … and…’

  ‘Can you tell me what happened?’

  I drew a tree on the pad, leafless and solitary. She was silent for a moment. Silence during a call is unnerving until you learn to decipher it. In my early days of volunteering I’d filled the silent gaps with questions and encouragement. I’d pour my words into their void, worried the caller might hang up or think me uninterested. I learned with time to be patient. Just because the caller can’t speak doesn’t mean they don’t want to. A breath can be a second, a minute, an hour.

  ‘Marcus pinned me to the wall,’ said Helen eventually. ‘He held my arms over my head like I was a tree, pinned me … between my legs … with his knee.’ I visualised her as a tree with stretched-out branches. ‘I told him to stop. I didn’t like it. He said I did and I screamed at him to stop, said, “Stop Mr Westerly!” He let go then, asked me who the fuck Mr Westerly was, and I cried.’

  Helen sobbed as she spoke. When she stopped to inhale, I didn’t push – I waited for her to breathe.

  ‘I’m OK,’ she reminded me. ‘I just need to cry while I’m telling you, but I’m OK. I told Marcus it was over. He was gentle then and said he’d thought I enjoyed his passion. It’s not his fault. He’s not Mr Westerly.’

  ‘Tell me about Mr Westerly,’ I said.

  I had a feeling in my heart – like when you watch a film and you know a scary scene is coming; you know the girl is going to be ripped apart, you’ve seen it before and you know it’s coming, but you can’t turn it off or look away.

  ‘Mr Westerly was my acting teacher,’ she said. ‘He took the whole class but he told me I was one of his best students, along with a girl called Joyce. He said whoever behaved best, whoever played the finest role, would receive extra lessons. He said I was a beautiful tree. My mother was proud when I played Juliet – she sat in the front row and applauded the loudest when I stabbed myself with Romeo’s dagger. “Helen Boyce, you’ll be someone, now!” she cried. Mr Westerly helped me die so well.’

  I drew my chafed hand into a fist and pressed it to my closed mouth.

  ‘He used to touch me.’ Helen’s voice was angry. ‘Not like he should have done. You know how I mean, don’t you? I was eleven. How should you touch an eleven-year-old? Not on her chest when you’re showing her how to be a willow tree or at the top of her leg when you’re holding her. Not in her underwear when she’s changing into her costume, not on her back, her thighs, her mouth. I asked my mother if I could stop the acting lessons, but she begged me to carry on. She said I could be somebody one day. I didn’t think to ask if I could just swap teachers. Eventually Mr Westerly moved away, but I had no interest in the theatre after that. I still can’t bear to watch Romeo and Juliet.’

  ‘You’re so brave.’ That was all I could think to say. I felt like I’d eaten something hot; acid moved from my stomach up to my throat. ‘It must have been difficult telling me this. Does it feel good to talk?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘It wasn’t my fault. It really wasn’t. God, I was eleven. I thought that by accepting his lessons I had given him permission to do those things. And now I’ve left Marcus. I’m not pathetic after all. I thought a relationship had to be about, you know, surrender. I told Marcus that, and he hasn’t harassed me since. He was something I had to do to see that.’

  ‘How does it feel to remember this?’ The question came from Catherine not Katrina.

  ‘I’d never forgotten,’ she said. ‘We forget nothing – memories are always there. We’re just afraid to look. But why? Fear is just fear. All we have to do is look, and we won’t be afraid.’

  ‘Will you take a different class?’ I asked.

  ‘Maybe,’ she said. ‘Maybe I’ll avoid classes. Perhaps I’ll train to be a teacher. I think I’d be good at it.’

  ‘You sound optimistic,’ I said.

  ‘I am. Thank you, Katrina. I know we only spoke a few times, but you have no idea how it’s helped.’

  She hung up and I exhaled; my breath was slow and unremembering.

  Back in the lounge area I wasn’t in the mood for the game anymore. I asked Christopher to take my turn and went to the kitchen. The Sex Addicts R Us poster caught my eye as I made tea. Beneath a glitter-covered pine-cone garland, the advertisement depicted a group of people sitting on chairs in a circle, the words ‘You are not alone’ above them. I’d looked at it maybe twenty times but never noticed the image.

  Was the circle supposed to comfort the addicts? Perhaps link them in an eternal ring in which each guest faced another, never alone. I preferred the idea of the phones. Only anonymity would help me remember. Helen had said we’re only afraid to look, but I disagreed. I wanted to look. I wanted to remember my rabbit Geraldine and my ninth year and people in photographs who smiled with me.

  I drank my tea at the sink because I hadn’t made one for the others and went back into the lounge. Christopher was in booth two.

  ‘It’s your turn.’ Jane sat at the Monopoly board, eating a KitKat and polishing one of her bracelets on her sleeve.

  ‘I can’t remember where I was.’

  ‘You’re here.’ She pointed to Park Lane. ‘Christopher said it’s the unluckiest street.’

  ‘Wonder if it was flooded.’

  ‘Doubt it,’ snapped Jane. ‘It didn’t rain in London.’

  I wondered if Christopher would have chosen to buy it if I’d been on the phone and he’d assumed my place. Did he think the whole world was unlucky or just him? Jane and I circled the board a couple more times, her buying property for Christopher until
his pile of money diminished. When he returned from the booth we managed a few more turns before the phone took her away.

  ‘Norman’s coming in later to see you.’ Christopher counted his boot ten places and landed on Park Lane.

  ‘I own it!’ I cried. ‘You owe me thirty-five quid.’

  ‘You bought it? You are an optimist.’

  ‘Why is Norman coming to see me?’ I put the money in my pile.

  ‘To see how you’re getting on.’

  Jane flopped into her cushion. ‘A man about anal ulcers,’ she said.

  ‘So are we going to play the game until someone is bankrupt or until the end of the shift?’ I threw the dice and moved my dog seven along.

  ‘Whichever comes first,’ said Christopher. ‘And when I reign supreme you can buy drinks at the Christmas do. You coming, Katrina?’

  ‘I don’t know. When is it?’

  ‘This Saturday night. We’re all meeting in Sharky’s bar.’

  ‘Will you bring your date?’ Jangly looked at Christopher, who fiddled with his shirt cuff. ‘Did he mention he has a hot date tonight? He’s such a dark horse. He was telling me while you were on the phone.’

  I shuffled my money and put it back on the board.

  ‘It’s not a date, it’s a favour,’ said Christopher. ‘My sister set me up with her friend – we’re all going out. She thinks I should socialise more.’

  ‘That’s a date,’ said Jane. ‘And you’re wearing such a nice shirt.’

  I stood, intending to go back to the kitchen and make tea for everyone, and caught the board’s corner, tipping it up, sending money fluttering to the ground as if from a speeding getaway car, scattering trinkets and cards, and tossing the dice, which resulted in two sixes landing at Santa’s feet.

  ‘Katrina!’ Jane held her face.

  I felt stupid, apologised and blushed and left the room.

  ‘And you were winning,’ said Christopher.

  I went into the kitchen. The phone rang in one of the booths and I knew it was my turn but didn’t care. Clumsy Catherine my mother often called me – clothes I wore got torn, steps I climbed tripped me up, drinks I poured got spilt, games I played got ruined. My stupid hands looked like fire, my hair was frizzy from the damp weather, and my ill-chosen pink bra showed through my white shirt.

  In the privacy of the kitchen I swore four times and clattered cups to hide my tantrum. After enough words I returned to the lounge.

  ‘Shall we play cards instead?’ I suggested to Jane. Christopher was on the phone.

  ‘I think it’s time we took our roles seriously,’ she snapped.

  ‘Guess that’s a no then.’

  I picked up a Woman & Home magazine and flicked through pages about how to cook and how to be assertive and how to fold napkins and how to seduce a man, and decided they should write an article on how to remember. I’d done research on the library computer on it. I’d read tips like ‘visualise it’. How could I if I didn’t know what to picture? I’d read tips like ‘pay attention’, and ‘eat more fish’, and ‘convert words into pictures’, and ‘use rhymes’. These were all ways to remember people’s names or masses of notes for an exam. But how to remember what happened long ago?

  Outside a half-moon hid behind the fir trees at the end of the garden. The flat would be cold. I had a frozen meal to look forward to and reality TV and, hopefully, oblivion.

  When Christopher came back from the phones he sat opposite me. A piece of tinsel pinned to the Flood Crisis banner fell behind him, landing with a gentle swish on the floor. We looked at it and one another and shrugged.

  Jane took the next call.

  ‘What’s she like?’ I asked.

  ‘Who?’ said Christopher.

  ‘Your date.’

  ‘It’s really not a date. My sister likes to interfere. I think we’re going to the new Italian place up the road. I’m really not bothered about it.’

  ‘No one would make me go if I didn’t want to.’ I opened another magazine.

  The phone rang; my turn. It was a silent caller. He or she just breathed softly and I heard a TV teatime discussion show in the background. At Crisis Care we had to give such callers twenty minutes before hanging up. They might just need to hear a voice. Some had perhaps taken pills and were waiting for them to work, wanting another human to witness their passing.

  I said, ‘Take your time,’ to the caller and I waited.

  I understood how it felt to not find words. I listened to the breaths and waited. After a while I said, ‘I’m still here.’ In the end, all you can do is tell them to call back if they need and hang up, which I did with the despondency I always felt at not having helped.

  Christopher was looking through one of Norman’s drawers; Jane was on the phone. I dropped into the big cushion and Christopher opened the logbook he’d found. He slammed it shut after a moment.

  ‘Do you think I should go tonight?’ He held my gaze.

  ‘Do you think I should go on Saturday?’ I asked him.

  Jane returned to the lounge. ‘Poor woman,’ she said. ‘She was four months pregnant when she was flooded and lost the baby. The stress of all the upheaval. She’s pregnant again now and terrified.’

  The Singing Santa burst into song, giving us one warped chorus of ‘Jingle Bells’ and three improper thrusts, then he died again. Christopher laughed but he was the only one. The phone rang and I watched him walk into the cubicle, his shirt now creased at the back, too. A moment later I picked the other one up after four rings and said, ‘Flood Crisis, how can I help?’

  ‘It’s Sid,’ he said. ‘This sounds like Katrina.’

  I smiled. ‘Yes, Sid, how are you today?’

  ‘I rang yesterday and chatted to a man for five minutes, but he couldn’t understand me like you do.’

  I wrote ‘Sid’ on the pad and underlined it twice. I didn’t care if I was getting attached; I was just pleased to have made a connection with a caller. Why else would anyone do this if not in the hope that they touched someone and made a difference?

  ‘How’s your cough today?’

  ‘Still bad.’ He coughed as though to prove it. ‘I ended up in Casualty on Monday. My mate Boris was over from Doncaster. We had a game of cards and I was coughing up blood, so he took me straight down there. Didn’t want to go. Hate hospitals. They’ve done some tests, and I’m waiting on the results. I was sent to the ward, but the nurse wouldn’t let me help myself to tea so I discharged myself. Nothing they could do about that.’

  ‘Will you go back if you need to?’ I asked.

  ‘Rather not. I’ll wait for my test results and take whatever they give to cure me and stay here in my flat. I hate having a card game interrupted like that. I was winning, too. One card away from a royal flush. Not had one of those since 1983. Nearly lost my house in a game in Prague once.’

  I laughed. ‘Nearly? Must have been scary.’

  ‘I loved those moments. I was living then. What am I doing now? Playing poker with cherry boiled sweets and an eighty-nine-year-old mate who’s almost blind.’

  ‘You’re still playing,’ I said.

  He coughed. ‘Glad I remember how. Funny that I remember over a hundred card games but I don’t know where I’ve left my glasses or what happened three years ago. A stroke is a cruel thing – wouldn’t wish it on anyone.’

  Sid’s memory had been stolen by the stroke; I wondered if I’d had a mini-stroke, one with no symptoms other than memory loss and perhaps clumsiness. Or had I been this way all my life? It was difficult to know with such a bad memory.

  The chair squeaked as I reclined and I felt a twinge in my back. Christopher had returned to the lounge area. I could hear him talking to Jane about his faulty motherboard.

  ‘When did you have the stroke?’ I asked Sid.

  ‘Just after the floods.’ He’d told me the same the first time we spoke. ‘It may have been stress-related, except I wasn’t flooded.’

  ‘Your friends moved away and you’re alo
ne. And we were all nervous about whether there would be more rain.’

  ‘I wish the stroke would make me forget all that, but it only took my good memories. I remember all the crap but I can’t remember my daughter’s face.’

  ‘What do you remember about her?’

  ‘How she smelt.’ He sighed.

  ‘Can you tell me what happened to her?’

  After a long silence Sid said, ‘I lost her. Though I can’t remember the details of her face, I remember her voice.’

  I was curious what he meant but also didn’t want to know. It wasn’t important. The why wasn’t as important as how one felt; always the feelings at crisis lines.

  ‘Tell me about that,’ I said. He could define the question however he wished.

  He chose not to respond.

  I scribbled out the word ‘daughter’ on the pad and said we could talk about something else.

  ‘What else is there?’ asked Sid. ‘I’ve been thinking about my life. It’s all I do – think. I wonder if we think about our lives the nearer we get to the end of them.’

  ‘But how can we know when we’re near the end?’

  ‘I sense it.’ He had gone from ‘we’ to ‘I’. He wasn’t musing on an idea; he was talking about himself. ‘I’m not saying I’ll drop dead tomorrow or next year, but I can feel my mind closing down. I have regrets. Oh, I can remember the regrets. We can’t go back though, can we?’

  ‘Would you like to talk about them – the regrets?’

  I wondered if that was why he’d called us. The flood, the stroke, the cough, the loneliness, they were all incidental. It was never about those things. Never about the trees. Callers often talked of symptoms but they needed to discuss the cause, and that was never so obvious.

  ‘I don’t want the results,’ he said.

  ‘The hospital results?’

  ‘What’s the point?’ Sid coughed, and I could tell he was covering his mouth so I didn’t hear its full extent.

  ‘They’ll be able to make you better,’ I said.